


Heroes' Feast

by strawberry_sky



Category: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Gen, episode 83 spoilers, look if there are two things that get me it's parallels and nights before big battles, rated T for angst and also a lot of smoking weed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-18 03:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21504502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberry_sky/pseuds/strawberry_sky
Summary: *EPISODE 83 SPOILERS*"Time is just circles in circles in circles, isn't it?Alanis blows some smoke rings into the air."on the night before the battle on the ninth layer of the Hells, everyone prepares in their own way. Alanis can't stop thinking about the past.
Relationships: Alanis & Balnor, Alanis & Moonshine Cybin & Hardwon Surefoot & Beverly Toegold V, Alanis & Thiala & Ulfgar Trueaxe, Alanis/Thiala (Not Another D&D Podcast), Moonshine Cybin & Hardwon Surefoot & Beverly Toegold V & Balnor
Comments: 25
Kudos: 69





	Heroes' Feast

**Author's Note:**

> alanis: *appears in an episode again*  
> me, already opening a google doc: oh no, can't believe I HAVE to write a fic, can't believe everyone's making me do this--
> 
> one of these days I'll write a fic that DOESN'T revolve around Alanis or Thiala, promise.  
> I went back and forth about whether I should hold onto this and edit it after episode 84 drops, but I ultimately decided I like the meta-uncertainty. happy night-before-the-last-canon-Bahumia-episode-in-2019, I hope all the foreshadowing i drop in this fic immediately becomes outdated <3

“Well, before we get some rest, who’s hungry? 'Cause we might as well have a Heroes’ Feast now.” Moonshine is already standing up as she says it, wiping off the last crumbs of burning sand on the legs of her overalls. “You got a kitchen in this mansion?” 

“Uhhhh.” Alanis thinks about it for a second, and when she opens her eyes, a door has appeared that wasn’t there before. Alanis points toward it. “Do you _need_ a kitchen for Heroes’ Feast? I didn’t think that was part of the spell.” 

“Oh, it’s not,” says Moonshine. “But it makes it a little more organic.” 

She disappears into the kitchen, humming slightly to herself. After a moment, Beverly follows her, looking determined and a little bit ashamed. Ilsed, clearly failing to read the room, drifts after them, speculating about his ability to eat ghost food.

“Where’s the bathroom?” asks Balnor, who looks even more exhausted and run-down than the rest of them. The one person here who didn't choose to be an adventurer. Alanis points, and Balnor trudges off in that direction. 

Hardwon lets out a long breath and runs a hand through hair that is much shorter and less bushy than Alanis remembers. He sinks down against one wall and starts methodically wiping blood and gore off a hammer that has also changed, has gotten bigger and stronger somehow in the...has it really only been a couple weeks since Alanis last saw them? 

Fuck. 

She takes a drag from her pipe and lets her gaze slide back to her conspiracy board. Pictures and discarded theories and late night ramblings, a puzzle with a solution but no real conclusion. 

Already she's starting to smell spices and smoke from the kitchen. Here she is, five timelines later, back in her mansion in the eighth layer of Hell, working with Ilsed to kill the devil, and someone she cares about is making a Heroes’ Feast in the next room. Time is just circles in circles in circles, isn't it?

She blows some smoke rings into the air. 

_~_

_“You need to eat, Alanis.”_

_“I’m good,” Alanis murmurs, not taking her eyes off her spellbook. She’s reading the spells she’s picked out for tomorrow’s battle over and over again. Fly. Counterspell. Time Stop. Counterspell again._

_She feels Thiala’s arms slide around her waist, feels the other woman rest her cheek against the center of Alanis’s shoulder blades. “You_ need _to eat, because it’s a sixth level spell and I don’t want to waste it.”_

_Alanis pauses. “Well, you know I hate to waste a spell slot.”_

_She turns around so that they’re face to face and rests her hands on Thiala’s hips. “You okay?” Alanis asks quietly, searching Thiala’s face. Thiala looks tired, but she smiles._

_“As okay as anyone who’s planning to kill the King of Hell tomorrow can be,” she says._

_“Top of the world, then,” says Alanis, dry words, without even a forced smile behind them. “Where’s Ilsed?”_

_Thiala jerks her head toward the main room behind them. “In the living room, refusing to eat my food despite its demonstrable benefits. Ulfgar’s glaring him down and wiping manticore blood off his axe. He_ hates _that Ilsed’s here.”_

_“Him and me both,” Alanis mutters._

_“Me too,” says Thiala. “It gives me a bad feeling. But I don’t see what choice we have.”_

_“Yeah.” There should be another choice. Alanis knows there’s always another choice. But they’re eight levels and five days deep in the Hells, and nothing here makes as much sense as it did on the Material Plane. Ilsed is right--he’s powerful, they know he’s powerful, and Asmodeus is a_ god _, and the three of them aren’t going to be enough on their own. There’s too much riding on this for them to fail. And here on the eighth layer of Hell it’s muddy. Is there good? Is there bad? Or is there only power?_

 _Thiala lets out a soft sigh, almost like a sob, and tucks her head into Alanis’s shoulder. Alanis brings her hands up behind her back, grounding herself in Thiala, solid and strong and_ radiant. _She wants to tell her they’ll be okay, but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t know that. Instead, she tells her what she does know. “It’s almost over. One way or another, tomorrow it will be over.”_

_“I hope you’re right,” Thiala murmurs into the fabric of her shirt. “By Pelor, I so hope you’re right.”_

_~_

Alanis slides down the wall to sit next to Hardwon, who is still silently wiping what looks like bloody dragon scales off his hammer. “You look different,” she says. 

Hardwon laughs, harsh but not mirthless. “I shaved.” 

_“That’s_ what it is.” A pause, and then, “Done that a few times myself.” 

Hardwon’s methodical motions stop for a second, and he slides his gaze over to her. 

“Revivify,” she clarifies. “Not...you know. I know it’s not the same, but--” 

“They both suck ass,” Hardwon says bluntly, laying his hammer aside. “I mean, this”--with a vague gesture at his whole body--“is about the best I could have hoped for, but still.”

Alanis nods sagely. “Dying...sucks,” she says, high enough that it feels like something profound.

She passes her pipe over to Hardwon, who takes it silently, and digs in his pocket for a flask of Crick Water, which he passes to her. Crick Water and what’s in Alanis’s pipe are definitely not substances that should be consumed together, but now doesn’t seem like the time for moderation. 

The door from the kitchen is pushed open and a somewhat dejected Bev walks through, crossing the room to sink down on Hardwon's other side and rest his head against the bigger man's shoulder. 

"You good?" says Hardwon, shifting his weight slightly to make Bev more comfortable.

Beverly nods. "Long day."

"Long day," Hardwon agrees. 

The air is thick with things they're leaving unsaid. Alanis has been too busy with Ilsed to keep up with what the Band of Boobs have been doing, and as glad as she has been to see them all alive and still cracking jokes, now she almost doesn't want to ask. 

"I really am sorry I didn't tell you about your dad," she says softly, looking past Hardwon to Beverly.

Bev shrugs. "It's okay. I get why you did it." There's a moment’s pause, and then, "Anyway, I killed him." 

Alanis chokes on a mouthful of smoke. “You _what_?” she says when she can breathe again. 

“I killed him,” says Bev, flatly. “Like, a couple hours ago.”

“Ilsed--Akarot, I guess--split us up,” Hardwon explains. “I had to fight my ex’s dad except he was a dragon. Moonshine had to fight the evil spore version of her aunt. And Bev--” 

“Had to fight my dad, except he was a devil,” Bev says. 

“Shit, you guys.” Alanis and Thiala and Ulfgar had to kill their fair share of devils and monsters on their own trip through the Hells, but it hadn’t been that fucking _personal_. “I’m so sorry.” 

“Weirdly, I think it’s better now?” Bev says. “The...the Dusk Mother came and took him.” He takes a deep, shuddery breath, and lets words tumble out of his mouth all at once. “So like, I don’t have to worry about him, now? I don’t have to worry that he’ll hurt my friends, or get stuck in Hell forever. I don’t have to worry that he’ll convince me to join him. I just--know the Dusk Mother’s got him now. Does that make sense?” 

“‘Course it does,” says Alanis softly, and Hardwon shifts his weight again so he can put one arm around Beverly’s shoulders. 

The Dusk Mother. Not a god Alanis has thought of often--not that she thinks of gods often. Goddess of redemption, right? Goddess of light and death and never being too far gone? 

She thinks of a cracked amulet, mended. It’s a nice thought. Impossible, of course, but a nice thought all the same. 

~

_Thiala’s Heroes’ Feast is a picnic, complete with red-and-white checkered blanket and basket with a folding top that materialize every time she casts the spell. It’s always simple food--sandwiches, blocks of cheese, apples, wine--but the apples are always perfectly ripe and the sandwiches always have a perfect meat-to-bread ratio. The first time Thiala cast Heroes’ Feast, she almost cried, and as they ate she told Alanis and Ulfgar a bunch of stories about the way the village she’d grown up in was before the wandering giant had destroyed it._

_“Pass the manchego?” Alanis holds up her hand and Ulfgar tosses the cheese her way without even looking, too busy devouring a sandwich as big as Alanis’s head._

_She catches it and slices off a chunk with her knife. “Sure you don’t want any, grave boy?” she calls over to Ilsed. The thin, pale necromancer is sitting in the corner, watching them through heavy-lidded eyes._

_“I’m fine, thank you,” he says in a voice that is somehow dry and soupy all at once. “Is there a room in this mansion where I could prepare for tomorrow?”_

_Alanis thinks for a second. “Yeah,” she says, gesturing with her knife toward a small and harmless room that she just created. “Go wild.”_

_“I shall.” Ilsed almost seems to glide over to the room and close the door behind him._

_“Fuckin’ hate that guy,” Ulfgar mutters. “Can’t wait to chop his head off with my axe.”_

_“Oh, I can’t wait to see that,” says Alanis._

_“Shhhh,” Thiala hisses. “He’s just in the other room.”_

_“He’s gotta know we’re planning to double cross him,” Alanis points out. “I mean, he’s probably planning to do the same.”_

_“I’d like to see him try,” Ulfgar growls._

_“I just hope this doesn’t bite us in the ass,” Thiala sighs._

_“What does Pelor think about it?” Ulfgar asks, popping a strawberry in his mouth._

_Thiala hesitates before she answers, and when she speaks her voice is strained. “He’s...hard to get to down here. But I can’t imagine he’d approve of working with a necromancer.”_

_Alanis and Ulfgar exchange a glance. “It’s fine,” says Alanis quickly. “It’s temporary. Our goal is just to kill Asmodeus, and Ilsed is the quickest way to do that. He’s got no army, he can’t beat the three of us in a fight. It’s going to be fine.”_

_“And we’ll probably get killed by the giant devil anyway,” says Ulfgar cheerfully, taking a big swig of ale. “Big blaze of glory.”_

_“Well, yeah, that too.” Alanis sets the cheese down and lights her pipe. She looks over at Thiala, who is nervously fiddling with the chain of her amulet, and she softens a little. “Great picnic, Thia,” she says, placing her hand over Thiala’s where it’s resting on the blanket._

_“Thank you,” says Thiala, smiling slightly. “I wanted to make sure it was a good one.”_

_“_ Great _one,” says Ulfgar, and he lets out a tremendous belch, and Thiala exclaims in disgust and pinches her nose shut while Alanis holds up a hand for a high-five, and all three of them laugh much louder and for longer than the situation warrants._

_~_

“You okay, Alanis?” Moonshine’s voice startles Alanis out of her reverie. Most of the delicious Breakfast-at-Midnight-or-whatever-time-it-is-on-this-plane Feast has been eaten, leaving only Hardwon still sitting at the low table, chewing slowly on a piece of bacon. Balnor sits next to him, saying something in a low voice. Behind them, Beverly is holding his book about the Hells up to Ilsed’s spectral form, listening with a furrowed brow as Ilsed points at something on the page. 

“Yeah,” Alanis says, twisting her lips into a smile. “Yeah, of course I am, why wouldn’t I be?” She brings her pipe up to her lips and wills her hand to stop shaking.

“Hmmmm.” The other elf is watching Alanis a little too closely and a little too sharply. Those high Wisdom scores can be fucking annoying sometimes. “You sure? I don’t want to pass judgement, but that board has a little ‘ramblings of a madman’ vibe to it.” 

Alanis narrows her eyes. “Hey. I was solving a mystery. Gotta organize my thoughts somehow.” 

“Okay, okay.” Moonshine puts up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “You’ve just been through some shit lately, is all.” 

Alanis slides her gaze over to Moonshine. The Crick elf is staring pensively at the remnants of the Heroes’ Feast on the table. “Didn’t you almost die today, like, several times? We’ve all been through some shit.” 

“Not alone, though,” says Moonshine gently. “I know it’s not easy, to feel like the whole weight of keeping people together and alive is up to you.” 

Alanis shrugs. “I can handle it.” It’s just fixing her own mistakes. She was the one who dragged Thiala and Ulfgar out of the Hells and let Akarot stay on the throne, she was the one who didn’t see what Thiala was becoming until it was too late. 

“Well, we’re here to help, now,” says Moonshine. “You don’t have to do it all alone.” 

Alanis doesn’t answer, just takes another drag from her pipe. 

Moonshine sighs, and leans against the wall next to Alanis. Moonshine smells like earth and water and a little like decay, but in a good way. Like growing things, like a rotting log in the forest after rain. It’s nice. 

There’s a long silence before Moonshine speaks again. "You know, MeeMaw and Ol' Cobb never talked to me about Marabelle when I was growin' up? I didn’t even know I had an aunt ‘til a couple months ago. And I get it, they thought she betrayed them, they never even wanted to think about her--but they loved her, y’know? And they just...let her be forgotten.” Moonshine has sprouted a single purple mushroom from the skin between her fingers, and she’s staring at it with a very odd expression. “I just wonder if things would have been different. If they’d talked about it. If they could have...”

“Saved her?” Alanis suggests.

“Or somethin’. Or at least not had it all bottled up inside.” Moonshine sighs, and closes her fist around the mushroom. “I’m just saying, just because people let you down, doesn’t mean you need to pretend you never loved them. I know if I lost Hardwon or young Bev...I'd never be the same."

"I'm not." Alanis clears her throat and blinks very rapidly. “But that’s just how it is. Thiala...Thiala made her choices.” 

“I know,” says Moonshine, gently. “But you’re allowed to be sad. You’re allowed to miss her.” 

“I’m going to kill her.” She’s done it once already. She knows someone’s going to have to do it again. That’s how this ends. That’s how this has to end. 

“That doesn’t mean you can’t miss her.” Moonshine gently squeezes Alanis’s arm before she walks away to tousle Beverly’s hair and wrap her arms around Hardwon’s neck so she can take the last pancake right out of his hands. 

Alanis stands perfectly still for a solid thirty seconds. Then she rubs the back of her hand across her eyes and fills her lungs with smoke. 

Later, when the invisible servants have cleaned up the remnants of the feast, when they’ve gone over the plan for tomorrow, when Ilsed has already said goodbye and disappeared into the wall, Moonshine and Bev and Hardwon head off down the hallway toward the room that has one big bed in it. Balnor hangs a few steps behind, waving them off when Bev looks questioningly behind him. “You go on, I’ll catch up.” 

“What’s up?” Alanis asks him as the door closes behind the Band of Boobs. 

Balnor looks up at Alanis. “I know none of us are talking about it, but if we decide to close the Hells, someone is going to have to wear that crown and sit on that throne.” 

“Yes…” says Alanis slowly. She thinks she sees where he’s going with this.

“And I’m not going to let it be any of them.” 

“Of course not.” 

“And you’re the only one of us powerful enough to fight Thiala.” 

“I don’t know about the _only_ one, but yes, it would be good to have me there.” 

“So that leaves me.” There’s a fixed determination in Balnor’s voice. “Or Pendergreens. But probably me.” 

“That...that is how the math works out,” Alanis reluctantly admits. It would be a lie to pretend it hasn’t occurred to her as well. 

Balnor grabs her arm with a surprisingly fierce grip. “They have to make it out of here,” he says with more passion than she’s ever heard in his voice. “They deserve to get to go home. I want you to make sure they do. Help me save my family this time.”

Alanis searches his face. She remembers sitting at his kitchen table in an entirely different timeline, asking him to give up everything to save a world that wasn’t even his. She remembers the sight of him practicing sword drills in the burned-out shell of his home village. “Bev’s not going to want to lose you,” she says. “None of them are.” 

Balnor looks sad at that, but he forges on. “That’s why I want you to make sure they do, if it comes to that. We all have to give things up to save the world.”

He’s right, of course. Alanis knows this better than anyone. “Okay,” Alanis agrees. “Okay. Only if it comes to that.” 

Balnor looks relieved. “Only if it comes to that. And assuming Akarot doesn’t kill us.” 

“Right,” Alanis says. “All these plans, always, are assuming we don’t just get killed.” 

Balnor gives half a smile, and looks like he’s about to walk away, but Alanis grabs his shoulder before he can. “You don’t _have_ to stay.” It’s very important to her that he knows this. “We don’t _have_ to close the Hells. There’s always going to be another option, and even if there isn’t--you don’t _have_ to.” 

Balnor is quiet for a moment, considering this. “Do you remember what you said to me, right before you sent me here?”

“Of course,” she says quietly. “I said there was a war coming, and everyone needed to fight. Even old men who don’t know how.’” 

Balnor nods, a single motion, quick and firm. “I didn’t know how. But now I do.” He rests his sword on his shoulder and looks up at her. “Goodnight, Alanis,” he says, and he walks off toward where his party is waiting.

~

_Nights before other big battles have involved quiet confessions and worst-case-scenario preparations. They’ve involved Thiala and Alanis slipping off into the woods together or locking the door to one of the bedrooms in the mansion. They’ve involved all three of them sitting around a fire talking about the past, about the future, about what they hope happens after they’re gone._

_The night before the fight Asmodeus just feels like an ordinary night. They pack up their gear, go over the plan one more time. Thiala prays, Alanis studies her spellbook, Ulfgar polishes his axe._

_But they do all stay in the living room rather than departing to their separate rooms in the mansion. Ulfgar stretches out on a pile of cushions on the floor, staring up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. Thiala curls up on the couch, but not before coming over to where Alanis is sitting cross-legged in her favorite chair and kissing her. It's a goodnight kiss, not a goodbye kiss--simple and gentle and warm, the last few notes of a love ballad._

_"Good one," Alanis murmurs as Thiala pulls away._

_"They're all good," says Thiala, which is objectively not true, but Alanis understands and appreciates the sentiment behind it._

_Thiala lays down on the couch and pulls a big blanket over herself, and Alanis puts her spellbook and her pipe away and silently tells the invisible servants to turn off the lights._

_For a few seconds, the three of them breathe in sync._

_“I love you both,” Thiala says into the velvet darkness._

_“Love you too,” says Ulfgar._

_“Love you,” says Alanis._

_Anything else they could say has already been said, a hundred times, in a hundred ways. Alanis watches from her chair as Thiala closes her eyes, as Ulfgar’s breathing deepens into snores._

_Alanis is an elf. This means, supposedly, she will outlive Thiala and Ulfgar by hundreds of years._

_She and Thiala talked about it, once, on the journey to Asmodea--what it’s like to fall in love with someone who you know you won’t grow old with. It should have been an extremely sad conversation, but there was too much distance. It was all theoretical. Any world where either of them got to grow old was theoretical._

_“Besides,” Thiala had said, “I’m getting pretty good at this stuff now. Maybe none of us ever have to die.”_

_They all die young, or they never die at all._

_And they’re so_ close _, now. Whichever way the battle goes, tomorrow is the end. Probably, they all get killed by an archdevil. But maybe, if they’re blessed and strong and_ lucky _, they kill Asmodeus, and they somehow deal with Ilsed, and then they go home._

_They’ve barely even talked about what comes next. Do any of them know how to live in a world where all the battles have been fought? Can they really just retire quietly to Alanis’s workshop in Gladeholm or Thiala’s little stone cottage in the woods or Ulfgar’s house in Iron Deep? Do they chase immortality now? Is this what comes next? Magic and power, forever? Or do they just go home and try to live with the quiet?_

_Alanis lets out a slow breath, rubs her eyes, closes them. They’ll cross that bridge if they live past tomorrow._

_Gods, she hopes they live past tomorrow._

_~_

Alanis could trance anywhere in the mansion, but she chooses a room right next to the one with the one big bed. She sits on her own bed and puts her back to the wall, opening her spellbook in front of her as if she needs to rehearse the spells inside. 

She can hear them on the other side of the wall, talking in low voices. She hears a laugh, and she hears the voices gradually beginning to give way to snores. 

“If you happened to scry on me and follow me in here, that wouldn’t be uninvited,” she’d told them. She hadn’t told them how much she’d been counting on it, how desperately glad she was to have them here. She hadn’t wanted to ask them to come--she’d asked too much of them already. She’d dragged Balnor out of his timeline. She’d blown apart the Astral Keep and almost killed everyone inside--and she had to, of course, it was the best she could do, but still. How do you ask four people to follow you into Hell after you do a thing like that?

But here they are anyway. 

Here they are, and they’re talking about closing the Hells. That had never even _occurred_ to Alanis and her friends when they’d been here. The whole time, they’d been so focused on killing Asmodeus, and they’d just wiped out everything that stood in their way. And they’d done their best, they _had_. It had been so hard, and they’d had such good intentions, and they’d just been three people doing their very best to live up to the title of “hero.” 

And now Moonshine and Beverly and Hardwon and Balnor are doing the same, and they’re doing it even _better_ . They’re still making mistakes, of course, but they made it here even with Akarot directly targeting them. They freed all the souls on the first level. None of them have devil horns. They’re being _strategic_ and _selfless_ and they’re thinking about the morality of what they’re doing. They’re supporting each other and they’re willing to die for each other and because of that they’re keeping each other alive. 

It feels like jinxing it, but Alanis thinks if anyone can win this, it’s them.

She’s come so far since the last time she was here. She’s older, now. She’s done things and seen things that she never even thought to dream about. She’s so much more tired.

Alanis wants to live past tomorrow. She wants to finish things with Thiala. She wants to see Ulfgar again. 

But as she listens to the quiet snores on the other side of the wall, she thinks about what she’d give up to let Hardwon and Moonshine and Beverly make it, to let an adventuring party emerge from the ninth layer unscathed and good and still holding on to each other.

The answer, to her own surprise, is a lot. She would give up a lot.

Circles in circles in circles, she thinks again. But better circles. Brighter ones. Circles that know a little more, have a little more help. Circles that can do a little more good, each time.

She has to hope they can. 

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me about naddpod at drinkingdeadpeopletea.tumblr.com <3


End file.
